iOS 5 Tips and Tricks + New Features

The iOS 5, will be ready for download any moment now (available for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch 3rd and 4th generation, iPad and iPad 2) and here are some tips and tricks collected from the interwebs to help you get the most out of Apple's latest version of its mobile operating system.

Quick Camera Access
Want to take a quick photo? Double tap the home button when your phone is locked and a camera button will appear next to the "Slide to Unlock" at the bottom of the screen. Clicking this immediately takes you into the camera app. Have a password? Fear not, you can still quickly access the camera. The camera app is sandboxed and won't have access to your previous photos and files!

Take a photo using the volume button!
Finally! We have a real shutter button. Turn your camera sideways and hit the "+" volume button to snap a photo.

Notifications Panel (or, "No more annoying popups!")
Finally! We iOS users get to have a taste of a proper and legitimate notifications panel. All alerts, popups, and push notifications get displayed and archived inside this panel. Access it by swiping you finger down from the top of the screen. Note: this only works if your phone is unlocked.

View notifications from your phones lock screen
Is your phone locked? Guess what? You can still recent alerts and notifications from various apps. Just hit the home button or power button as if you were turning on your phone to check the time. Boom! Want to act on a notification message and open up a specific app? Just slide to app icon to the right with your finger. It will directly open up the app (and in theory, take you to the specific message or alert).

iCloud -- Backup your contacts, calendars, reminders, and more!
Want to take advantage of iCloud for storing and syncing your data? Check out the options in Settings → iCloud.

Read articles, blog posts, and webpage content without all the cruft
Safari has a new feature called Reader. Basically, it strips away any of the extraneous content on a webpage and displays only the important bits of the article or blog post in an easy to read -- almost ebook like -- format. All you need to do is navigate to any page and hit the "Reader" button in the URL bar.

{source: gdgt.com}

New Features

• You can use iCloud to synchronize your data, including music and photos, across your Apple devices.
• The ability to edit photos right on the phone. This includes red-eye removal, cropping and auto enhancement of whole pictures.
• iMessage, a new, free text-messaging service exclusive to users of iOS 5. It detects whether you are using the new system and routes a text message over the Internet instead of using the standard cellphone text services. It allows group messaging and notifies users when messages are read and/or delivered.
• Built-in Twitter support. Without adding a Twitter app, you can tweet directly from within functions like photos, maps, the browser and YouTube.
• Notifications of alerts, messages and dates can be gathered together in a drop-down panel, or can appear briefly at the top of the screen instead of displaying one at a time in a box that blocks your screen.
• There’s quick access to the camera, by simply double-clicking the home button, even if the phone is asleep. And you can use the volume up button as a shutter button.
• On the iPad, the browser has tabs, and you can split and move the onscreen keyboard to make thumb typing easier.
• You can create customized typing shortcuts, such as “tks” for “thanks.”
• In Mail, you can now format words so they appear in bold, italics or underlined.

{source: allthingsd.com}

Click the image above to view other iOS 5 hidden features via Macstories